HEAVY WEIGHTS MAKE YOU BIG - Not true. Heavy weights MAY make you big, but please read on so that you can better understand this issue.

I am sure that you have met someone (usually a guy) who lifts all of the time and never gets bigger. They lift the heaviest weight that they can and they workout like a fanatic. If heavy weights made you big then how could this person not be HUGE? Here is how...

Your body has several adaptations to exercise, some that you can see and some inside the body. When you lift heavy weight you are sending the signal to your body to gain tensile strength in that muscle, to increase connective tissue and possibly to store more energy in the muscle. Depending on how you EAT you will get more of some of this response and less of others. Also, lifting heavy breaks the muscle, and it takes a lot of energy to repair that tissue before it has seen any actual growth.

In summary, lifting heavy will only make you get big if you are in a calorie and Protein surplus (eating more of it then you need), you have the right body type for gain significant muscle and really, really know what you are doing. If these components are not aligned it is extremely unlikely that you will gain any substantial muscle and will only get the "toned" look from your endeavor into heavier weights.

One last thought. The beauty of the bodies ability to adapt when it comes to getting too big is that as soon as you stop using the muscle that you gain through all of that hard work your body will start to get rid of it, atrophy. So in the off chance that you have everything right and you actually gain more muscle than you want, then stop doing what got you that muscle and it will simply fade away.